Alan Perrin started his career as the head coach of China national team formally, and played two friendly matches during the FIFA international match week. China didn’t lose these two, which were a victory against Kuwait and a draw against Jordan, both played at home. The Frenchman’s first mission will be taking Team China to next year’s Asian Cup held in Australia.
“C’est bien facile d’être bon, le malaisé c’est d’être juste.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Financial Fair Play has posed football’s regulators with a quandary that Victor Hugo would no doubt quickly have recognised. When making the law it’s dead easy to be good; the hard part is being fair.
It’s just NOT cricket. That, in a nutshell, is the biggest obstacle the Indian Super League faces when it launches in October. It is football sold and packaged with the successful IPL formula. A burst of action over an intense couple of months. Big names, star backers (none bigger than team owner Sachin Tendulkar). Not too may teams (eight), a good spread around the country’s major cities, and a big focus on marketing, promotion, sponsorship and advertisers.
Recent reports suggesting that European Union countries were mulling a possible future sports boycott against Vladimir Putin’s Russia triggered two immediate thoughts.
“To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.” Robert Harris, Pompeii
There is no questioning the boldness of Premier League clubs’ activity in the transfer market this summer. The £835 million (€1.049 billion) in gross spending on new players exceeded the gross domestic product of San Marino or Gibraltar. When I wrote here three months ago that a financial volcano was primed to erupt in English football,
The Malky Mackay saga has once again brought racism and sexism in football back on the agenda. And in particular it has raised the question: why is it that the world’s greatest game is so integrated and seems so inclusive on the field of play but off it is “hideously” white, to use FA chairman Greg Dyke’s phrase. If there were any doubts about that last week’s launch of the Champions League once again displayed European football’s Janus face.
Bottles were flying on the pitch side, and Guangzhou Evergrande & Taobao FC were losing their grip on the Asian Champions League Trophy bit by bit. The quarter final of ACL between the trophy holders and the Australian club, West Sydney Wanderers, played August 27, was a spirit sapping match.
So FIFA President Sepp Blatter is a step nearer securing a fifth term as boss of world football, following this week’s announcement by his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini, probably his most credible potential challenger, that he would not stand against him in next year’s election. That means that world football’s governing body may be a step nearer possibly losing its direct, active representation in world sport’s most powerful club – the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Two months ago, when UEFA president Michel Platini was still weighing up whether to run for the top job in world football, it became abundantly clear in the build-up to the FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo that Europe was massively outnumbered in its opposition to a fifth term for Sepp Blatter.
So why did Platini not declare there and then that it was too risky to take on the wily old Swiss? It’s a fair question and one Platini was asked about when he finally announced,
“Hail, thou that art highly favoured… blessed art thou.” Archangel Gabriel to Mary; Luke 1:28
It has been a purgatorial 12 months or so for Manchester United. So if you are a supporter of theirs it must be tempting to look to a man named Angel Di María as some sort of celestial deliverer for your club. Sure, one Angel does not make a host but it should not be too hard for a £59.7 million player of his quality to make an impact.
Voila…
So Michel Platini will be staying at UEFA.
And it might be just as well there’s nothing to divert his attention from an important revamp, in which his General Secretary Gianni Infantino has been instrumental.
This publication has a solid track record of fiercely attacking racism in football and beyond and, once again, racism has reared its ugly head in England. And, most disappointingly, at the highest level of the game in terms of ‘mass’ influence. What would be wrong though, is to look at the Mackay case as a one-off, as a singular event that cries out for (meaningless) punishment in case the allegations are proven. Punishment that would be in line with the toothless fines FIFA and UEFA keep issuing in similar cases.
Liverpool posted the biggest pre-tax loss in the Premier League in 2012-13. The previous year only Manchester City posted a bigger one. In such circumstances, you might have expected the Anfield club to be squirrelling away at least some of its Luis Suárez windfall; to be showing a modicum of restraint in this summer’s transfer market in the interests of its bottom-line. All the more so with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) provisions hovering in the background.
“It used to be the norm for people in their early thirties to set up a home of their own, but sadly being ‘priced out’ is rapidly becoming the new norm.” David Orr, UK National Housing Federation
You might think it odd that a football business-to-business column would focus on the UK housing market but there is a lot it can tell us about our game. Not because of what we can learn about club incomes,
The recent reshuffle within the corridors of power at the South American confederation, Conmebol, following the death of its FIFA vice-president Julio Grondona, made for interesting reading. Not so much because of the personnel involved but because of the political structure that was put in place with regard to FIFA representation.